


you are airborne

by MyriadMinded



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Childhood Trauma, F/F, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Revenge, Suicide, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 20:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10047950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyriadMinded/pseuds/MyriadMinded
Summary: That’s what the alcohol is for, see. The alcohol and the pills and the half-assed self destruction.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: suicidal ideation, abuse, identity issues, dissociation, misplaced guilt, alcoholism, self medication. This might be considered implied pseudo incest, but it’s so vague I don’t know.
> 
> Title from Little Dragon's Feather.

 

+

When her heart breaks she’s a 14 year old with a 10-mile stare and muscles like stone. She spends a summer doing everything but crumbling- relearning the meaning of alone, adjusting her definition of freak, acquainting herself with the feeling of power, how it creeps like wild moss across her skeleton. She figures it out eventually, that her strength makes her _other_ , above and to the side of human; no longer the girl who had a family, but something new.

 

When her heart breaks she’s 20, she’s 19, she’s 25, she’s old, older, the oldest she’s ever been, older than she ever thought she’d live to see. When her heart breaks she acknowledges it like a stack of junkmail. It’s a chore, it’s impersonal, it’s routine, and she always has somewhere better to be.

 

The thing with heartbreak is that the whole concept is fake. No one knows that better than Jessica. You don’t go to the doctor with your sore ribcage, midnight sweats, and sudden fear of silence and say, _I think it’s broken doc, how long do I gotta keep the cast on this time?_ You can’t point to it, you can’t show it off like a scar, and you’ll never heal from it, not like you should.

 

Here’s a lesson that can only be learned the hard way - the human heart doesn’t break, it just keeps pumping whether you want it to or not.

 

 

 

+

“I think you’ve had enough,” one of a dozen bartenders this week says to her. The patronizing tone must be a prerequisite for the job, but that’s fine, it’s the pity she can’t stand, always makes her itch to start something ugly.

 

It’s a good thing liquor store owners aren’t legally bound to have a conscience, and she’s fast friends with the kind who’ve done away with scruples. She likes people who don’t care whether she lives or dies or vomits blood, as long as it’s not on their merchandise. It’s something about the familiar comfort of people who care as much about her well-being as she does, or maybe it’s the cozy reaffirmation of her insignificance. Still, she sticks to the bars for as long as they let her, and it’s not like it’s the point, but getting thrown out with the trash is her favorite way to end the week.

 

 

 

+

She learns the truth about finality too young. That dead means dead means dead; that dead means forever and never again and _good luck, kid, someday day you’ll only remember the good things_. That’s the only explanation for the way she is, all these things she learned before she was old enough to understand that the world doesn’t end for anyone, even her.

 

That’s what the alcohol is for, see. The alcohol and the pills and the half-assed self-destruction. She pursues death with meandering indecisiveness, as if she doesn’t have anything better to do, as if she hasn’t wanted it since she woke up strange in a hospital bed ten years ago.

 

She drinks too much, smokes too much, works too much, and never sleeps unless she tricks herself into it. Some have said Jessica thrives on conflict, to which she responds with the smile of a fugitive, red and black and wild all over. Fighting is just another way to feel alive for a while and the inescapable reality is that she hasn’t done anything like _thrive_ since she hit adulthood with a burgeoning alcohol problem and three lifetime’s worth of grief lodged beneath her ribcage.

 

 

 

+

Another lesson she learned young: Nobody’s ever gonna make your problems their problems unless you’re _family_ and the people who try are the ones to be afraid of. They’re sharks who’ve smelled blood in the water, and they deal in exploitation. She learned all about vulnerability trapped between their jaws; learned that youth is nothing but cumbersome, and hunger is just an inconvenience for those with food. When the dust of disaster settles, no one likes the look of a kid who’s fighting for her life.

 

 

She’s never forgotten the score, not since the day she learned it - sucked it up like a good girl and tucked her ragged heart back beneath her skin, swallowed down the poison of an orphan’s survival. And it’s not a big deal that she can’t hide how fucked up she is anymore, not a big deal that she’s forgotten how to be anything but dishonest about why, because she’s alive and that has always been the point, hasn’t it? Isn’t this the survival she fought so hard for? Isn’t this what she wanted all along?

 

 

 

+

“It’s been three months, Jessica.” Trish confronts her the moment she shows up on her balcony. It’s the middle of the night and Jessica’s dressed like a cat burglar. She isn’t drunk, but she’s loaded enough to be flammable, and it’s apt, because this whole thing feels like playing with fire.

 

From the look on Trish’s face, she can’t believe Jessica has let herself become this awful. And Jessica gets that, she can’t believe how shitty she is either.

 

When Jessica looks at Trish she feels _stung_. Trish is hurt, Trish is mad, Trish is already convincing herself to forgive her, but Jessica. Jessica hasn’t done a damn thing to deserve her sister-not-sister’s forgiveness. Being in Trish’s home makes Jessica want to shrink and shrivel into the rancid clump of atoms she really is, and looking her in the eye is… is too much for tonight.

 

“Has it?” Hands shoved in her pockets, Jessica’s pretending to look around for shadowy figures, pretending she’s not losing her shit in real time. “Sorry, I’ve been busy.”

 

 _Three months_ … feels like ice water on bare skin, scalding overtaxed nerves - it’s been three months and Jessica had no idea. Time doesn’t behave like it used to. It’s elastic and subjective and she’s been losing a hell of a lot of it these days - spending hours that feel like minutes staring at the broken lock on her door, minutes that feel like hours contemplating the way her gun feels in her hand, the press of cold steel against her skin, primed and ready to serve whatever purpose she wants it to.

 

“Bullshit.” Trish says, narrowing her eyes. Which is true, which Jessica can’t and won’t deny. It’s all bullshit, all of it, all the way down.

 

“Sorry.” She says again, mapping the scuffs in the leather of her boots. It’s a useless word, used like a cheap token of acknowledgement and never big enough to say what she means. She sounds callous and awkward, empty handed as always. But there isn’t a word for this, the way she hates herself for Trish because she refuses to. The joke is that she really is sorry, so goddamn sorry for being the way she is, sorry all the time, everyday, every other minute. The punchline is that she’s just not sorry enough to be a better person any time soon.

 

Resigned, maybe that’s the word for someone like Jessica. Coward. Lost cause.

 

She hasn’t called Trish because she hasn’t wanted to. Because she didn’t want that kind of mirror held up to her suddenly exposed bullshit. She didn’t call because absence is a world better than abuse, and that’s all Jessica has in stock. She’s been telling herself she would call Trish the second she felt decent again, but the stars don’t align for the likes of Jessica, and now she’s spent three months in the void, pretending the only person she loves doesn’t exist.

 

 

 

+

Jessica is as follows:

Sick of her own shit and looking for something to drown it out with.

 

 

 

+

Years from now Jessica will be lying in a soft bed that smells like the woman she loves, and she’ll remember this time, who she is right at this moment – half drunk, violent and vulnerable and trying to die in a hundred different ways. She’ll think of the woman she is now and she’ll feel something deep in her chest unbuckle. She’ll be flooded with so much compassion that she won’t be able to stop crying for at least an hour, and Trish will just slide in beside her, warm and full of heaven, and hold her like she _knows_. But right now Jessica wouldn’t be able to show herself compassion on a clearly marked on a map.

 

In the present, Jessica hasn’t slept more than 4 consecutive hours in the past 3 days and she’s keeping her gaze away from windows because all she can think about is sunny terraces and terror, the updraft of freedom. Self-compassion doesn’t come cheap for someone like Jessica Jones, and she’s always been prone to mistake value with worth.

 

She’s got a lot of work to do, a lot of forgiveness to allow, and some scum to kill before she finds that bed. And she can’t see it now, wouldn’t believe it if you told her, but she’s already on her way there.

 

 

 

+

So she was taken advantage of by a dick with a god complex. So it’s messing with her head. So _what_. She’s not the first one, and she’s got no right, feeling so broken about it all the time. There are people everywhere who’ve had it so much worse and they still find a way to keep going, still figure out a way to be able to stand themselves again, how to fight for themselves again, how to love themselves like they’ve always deserved. But Jessica just isn’t strong enough to be one of those people, and she can’t stand anything anymore, including and especially herself.

 

In this aftermath, she takes care of herself by staying up all night, fantasizing about all the ways to take back what’s _hers_ , slowly, passionately; how to break a man in the most irrevocable way, how to make a person like him learn to hate himself for everything he is and isn’t.

 

So what if she never catches a break from the way she hates herself now. So what if she’s nothing like okay anymore. So what if she hurts and hurts and hurts- until all she can remember how to do is ache and ignore it.

 

 _So fucking what_ , she repeats to herself in the mirror- the filthy one in her apartment, the spotless one in Luke’s; the one that conceals his broken heart and her bottomless guilt and the shadow of the woman who sleeps between them. So what, it’s fucked up but so are a lot of things, several of which are her doing. Powerless. Dangerous. _Murderer_. Jessica has no right to forget that she has _never_ been the victim here.

 

Anyway, hasn’t strength always been her thing? Damn right it’s her thing and so she has to keep going, head held high like she deserves to still be alive, rage pointing inward and away from all the innocent bystanders of her disaster.

 

So she fucked up, and no, the fault isn’t hers, but the memories are, and she’ll never stop paying for them now. She’ll never forget the gravity of being super enough play god, but human enough to be used. She’ll never forget how it felt to lose reality piece by piece, the way all her definition bled out into his palms, laying there cold and inert, hating him and hating herself and losing her mind every other minute, starting from zero 100 times a day.

 

 

 

+

“Jess,” Trish has her hands in Jessica’s hair, and tears in her eyes. “You’re gonna be okay, you know that right?”

 

Jessica’s eyes are closed, and she’s wearing her shitty heart on her sleeve. She hasn’t told the truth in years. “I’m already okay.” She says. “I’m the okayest.” She’s lying again, and it’s strange to her, the way dishonesty has crossed wires with kindness, how she lies and lies and lies and has no idea who it’s supposed to protect anymore.

 

Trish has asked Jessica if she knows what she’s doing, if she plans on making it out of this alive, if she even wants to, and Jessica wouldn’t tell her the truth for all the tea in china.

 

 

 

+

Here’s a lesson Jessica taught herself: everyone has a limit. Even her, even Luke, even Trish. Everyone has a limit to what they can withstand, but only a lucky few know what it means to be pushed over it and get the pleasure of learning how to rebuild themselves from the rubble leftover. But the point is… the _point_ is that you may break when you fall, but that’s no reason to just roll over and take the abuse lying down.

 

Jessica reaches inside, finds the one thing that makes her feel capable of getting up again and again and again – she grasps it with all her might, she won’t let it go until it’s no longer the only thing keeping her alive. Rage, unalloyed, unleashed, big enough to carry her weight, strong enough to hold her together. She holds onto it until she’s shaking, baring her teeth to an empty room, and bleeding from the palms- everyone has a limit, even _him_. And she already knows what it is, knows exactly what will destroy his entire world from the ground up.

She knows it by name: Jessica Jones. Jessica Jones. Jessica Jones.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for canon discrepancies, of which I’m sure there are plenty.


End file.
